"The train had two cars. There was a total of fifteen passengers, lumped together by the common bonds of disinterest and ennui. The old man in the camel-colored sweater was still reading his magazine. At his reading speed, the issue may have gotten to be three months old. One heavy middle-aged lady was training her gaze at a distant point in space outside, as if a critic listening to a Scriabin sonata." -- Haruki Murakami

Friday, February 03, 2006

Fake Advice to Celebrities Who Didn't Ask For It, Vol. IV (I think)

QUESTION:Dear Kathy,

We would've written you individually, but someone totally stole both of our secret journals. That's why we got together--and also why our letter is on a Starbucks napkin. Sorry for the caramel goo. Minus our journals, the only paper in our purses is either wrapped around a hunk of Marlboro tobacco or has Franklin's face on it.

Anywayz, both our diaries were jacked in the last two days. Not only are we sad about losing our thoughts and dreams or whatever, we're pretty nervous about our, like, maybe not so nice pages getting into the wrong hands. You know? Like sometimes when you're dating a Carter brother you need to totally write eight or nine pages about ripping out some slut bitch's hair strand by strand...like, you just need to do it. But that, like, maybe shouldn't end up in In Touch because it might keep you from getting the Teen Vogue cover when your album drops.

You know, the kind of stuff every girl worries about.

So what do we do? Can we get our journals back? How do we keep the false tabloids from publishing our stuff, or putting it in one of those bitchy blind items that's all like Which star who had red hair and then blond hair and has those boobs and lost a lot of weight and was in a movie about a talking car wrote this about Bruce Willis's old penis? This situation is like, the opposite of hot. You know. Not hot.

Luv,Lost Original in Hands of Asshole Newspapers?andPeople Are Really Insensitive. Seriously.

ANSWER:Dear LOHAN and PARIS,

A short reading assignment: Harriet the Spy. There's even a movie you can rent instead of reading all one hundred and fifty, large type, fourth-grade-reading-level pages. Harriet the Spy. You do not keep a secret, steamy, venom-filled diary when everyone in the world is dying to know your business. If you do, it's bound to be stolen and revealed, and then you won't have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria. It's the ruling law of prepubescence, and therefore the law of the universe.

Go read the book.

That said, the literary landscape may also yield your ticket out of slander lawsuits and a lifetime of people reciting that quatrain you wrote about how Jared Leto's scrotum was "cute". Take a page from the James Frey book of crisis management: claim you embellished. Then take it a step further and say it wasn't a diary, but rather notes for your hip, timely roman a clef. Look at the wonders book publishing worked for Nicole Richie.

That's right, ladies. Book publishing makes you awesome.

Which is why you write to me. You may be celebutantes and janes-of-all-trades, but I, I am bathed in the distinct perfume of book publishing. Get on board the train to Coolville. We've room for two more.